Food safety in America is becoming a huge problem. Why? Deregulation, primarily. Couple that with Republican coziness with big business, including big ag and you get issues like this. This is what happens when a party that has railed against government, and all its attendant functions as being 'the problem' for last 30 years, becomes the sole governing party. They have no vested interest in seeing that the system functions, only in dividing up the patronage, much like a Third World country.
On that note, I think what we are seeing right now is the tail--but not quite then end--of a big deregulating cycle. At the beginning of the industrial revolution it was all laissez faire and then came Teddy Roosevelt and the trustbusters, who, following developments in Europe, began what I would consider America's first real cycle of regulating industry for the public good. As it's hard for politics (of any country) to maintain vigilance we've witnessed an assault the last 40 or so years on government's functions. This assault has led to mass deregulation and a sell-off of many of the government's assets and functions (Halliburton is just the tip of the iceberg). Today the average America doesn't have a clue what the government really does for her, what her taxes really pay for, other than war. And now she will find out via the absence of functional governmental protection for her own health and well being, not the faux, 'we're doing it for the children,' self-righteous anti-smoking crusade of St. John McCain . The EPA has been gutted. The FDA is fighting over contraception and ignoring real public health issues. It's all been politicized. It's going to get worse before it gets better, folks. It has to or it'll never change.
Who will be this century's Upton Sinclair?
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Comments: 17
Simply washing the vegetable does not stop the infection. The only way to stop all contamination is to cook well before eating. Not appetizing with lettuce? Can't help that. Maybe the government should prevent the sale of all raw vegetables unless they have been blanched or bleached.
The oversight to ensure proper safety mechanisms are in place does exist and being cozy with big business has nothing to do with an errant pig that rolled in the dirt at a spinach farm. Nor, again, is there anything government oversight might have done to prevent it.
We have massive problems with our food culture--from genetically engineered foods and overprocessed food leading to all kinds of ill health--in this country and the main cause is business and government are far too cozy with each other and there is not enough oversight. Denial is not the answer.
Maybe the Feds should pull the plug on Media that distorts the truth; CNN and Fox come to mind.
Maybe we should be responsible for not buying things from mega-corporations that ruin neighborhoods for profit.
Maybe Nanci that if you understood farming you would know that these things can be prevented but some folks who can make a difference look the other way for profit.
One place here does organic farming and uses only mulch and no poisons. I like their fruits and beggies and yeah they are out for profit not caring about people and I notice farmers all have their wn gardens and don't use it on the garden of stuff they eat. maybe a little severn dust is about it and that washes off
Maybe you should recognize the difference between a capitalist society and a communist society. Communist societies fail. Capitalist ones do not.
It has nothing to do with this, as you previously said:
It's not about 'finding' bacteria it is about preventing it. Here's the difference between successful capitalist nations and unsuccessful (and bankrupt) capitalist nations: successful capitalists countries realize that certain investments are critical for the proper functioning of the whole enterprise. Unsuccessful ones do not and just run their countries into the ground. Might oughta think about that.
Made me wonder about two things ... has it something to do with getting peoples attention fired up against illegal aliens again ... being as how many of them work in the agriculture industry ... and it is very evident that there is an organized movement underway about that issue and border fencing.
Or is it about a scare tactic to improve chances of getting the people to support irradiation of natural food products ... another movement by special interests that will destroy the natural nutritional makeup of much of what we eat ... especially vegetables and fruits.
It is all too complex to just blame the government as it is corporate interests that lobby to acquire that control anyway.
It is all about $$$ !!!
It's not that we don't KNOW how to grow, process, and sell food safely. Safe food gets produced all over the world, doesn't it? It's that for some unholy reason we've gotten too greedy to do it! I happen to have food poisoning right now, by the way, and since I'm more careful than most, I have no idea what I might have eaten that's made me sick.
Nanci, the recent spinach problem had nothing to do with a single or multiple random pigs rolling around next to the Spinach, but to fields that were improperly positioned or drained. Any nitwit with half a brain should have known that you don't put produce that needs a lot of water and drainage next to lots with animals in them on a higher grade. But in factory farming, its expedience and whatever makes it grow faster, look bigger and better, and the at lowest possible cost. Put that together with cheap labor, no hygiene facilities and no supervision, voila; e. coli or the potential for a whole host of other things. It's sheer luck that there haven't been epidemic proportion health issues-CDC and the FDA are just a few of the agencies that have been turned inside out by current administration--so big metrics but nothing to measure. We like our food BIG and perfect and shiny, like our vehicles.
Is this Dwight Eisenhower's worst dream come true -- with a really good little nightmare just before we wake up?
All those loony lefties who eat organic "stuff." The big companies are trying to muscle in on the organic business. The real organics depend on local business from local loonies and niche markets -- so far so good. Eat your mung bean sprouts.